It rained for the third hour, and the whole city seemed to be covered by a layer of wet and cold gauze.
Naples at midnight is not quiet, but very restrained.
There was a low siren sound in the harbor in the distance. Occasionally, motorcycles rolled the water and rolled across the street corner, and the hurried sound of tires dragged a long echo on the slate road.
Leah Cole held the folder and stood on the steps at the door of the art gallery.
She was not in a hurry to leave.
The umbrella was still closed, and the black umbrella handle was held firmly by her, and the drops of water slipped from the eaves and hit her high heels.
"You can get off work, Miss Cole."
Behind him, the curator stood in the crack of the door and gave her a professional smile. "It's been messy enough tonight."
Leah turned around, and the corners of her mouth raised a decent arc.
"Thank you for letting us watch the surveillance."
"This is something that the police need to cooperate with." The curator shrugged his shoulders and his eyes flashed away. "However, I still hope it's just an oolong this time. That painting... It's worth more than money.
"Art is never just money." Leah said softly.
Her voice is very gentle, as if she is afraid of being disturbed.
The curator understood and didn't say more. He just closed the door. The moment the heavy wooden door was closed, the soft yellow light in the room was cut off, leaving only the pale white of the street lamp outside.
Leah opened her umbrella and walked down the steps.
The raindrops hit the umbrella, making a fine sound. She walked through the square to the black bus temporarily stopped outside the main gate - the driver arranged by the consulate was still waiting for her.
She can't walk fast.
With every step, she replayed the surveillance picture she had just retrieved in her mind: the shadow sneaked through the back door, the painting was briefly covered at 1:23 a.m., and then the blank wall was clearly visible--
The painting is gone.
This is the real trouble tonight. It's not the weather, not the sudden call to the police, but the oil painting hanging in the main exhibition hall and valued as "priceless" by the insurance company, suddenly disappeared in front of everyone's eyes.
"Miss Cole?"
The driver poked his head out of the window and raised his chin to her. The rain line drooped between the two, cutting out their sight.
"I'll call you again." Lia nodded to him and signaled him not to get out of the car.
She turned around, recovered half an inch of the umbrella, and stopped under the steps in front of the art gallery.
The mobile phone vibrated - the signal was not stable in the humid air, and the screen turned on London time.
She hesitated for a second and finally didn't call out. She just muted her mobile phone.
At this moment, she had a vague ominous premonition.
It's not the kind of ominous thing that "will happen at work", but more personal and secretive - like an irrevocable intersection with a troublesome person.
There was a chill in the back of her neck.
It's not the wind, but it's like some kind of sight falling on her back.
"Your footsteps are so clean."
A low and hoarse male voice sounded behind the sound of rain, not far away, even with a careless smile.
Leah didn't look back immediately. She just subconsciously straightened her back and raised her umbrella a little higher, so that she could be wrapped in a safe round shadow by the rain and black umbrella.
"In this city, people who come out of the art gallery in the middle of the night usually don't walk so lightly." The voice continued, and the speed of speech was slow. "It's not a policeman, and it's not like a thief."
She just turned around.
I don't know when there was one more person on the steps.
The man leaned under the stone pillar on the right side of the entrance without an umbrella. The rain fell obliquely from the eaves, half of which was covered by the stone pillar, and the other half silently hit his shoulder.
He was wearing a dark shirt, and only the top two buttons of the neck were open, revealing a slightly bronze skin on the side of his neck and a pale white scar.
The scar slanted up from the collarbone and disappeared in the shadow of the neck.
The water flowed down the thin scar, converged into a drop at his throat knot, and slid into the clothes along the edge of the shirt.
Leah's first reaction was not "danger", but a keen perception - his posture was completely different from the shadow she saw in the surveillance tonight.
The shadow acted sharply, like a professionally trained thief.
And the man in front of him looked too calm, as if he did not appear at the crime scene, but a master who could be recognized at any time.
"Do we know each other?"
Leah asked in a calm voice.
The man looked up at her.
His eyes are very dark, but not the kind of cloudy black, but like the sea when the night has just fallen. It is quiet on the surface, but it is so deep that it can't be seen clearly.
The way he looked at her was neither rude nor polite - more like a scrutiny.
"It's too late to get to know each other now."
He slowly straightened up and came out of the stone pillar.
The rain line fell on his hair and shoulders in an instant, disrupting his deliberate sharpnesss.
He didn't seem to care that his clothes were wet. He just raised his hand to take something out of his trouser pocket.
It's not smoke.
It's a gun.
The silver metal flashed under the street lamp, and then he held it casually in his palm, and his fingertips gently turned around, looking more like playing with it than ready to use it.
"Are you going to make me scream?" Leah asked.
Her umbrella blocked most of the rain and the corners of her raised lips. When she said this, her tone was even more polite than when she just said goodbye to the curator.
"If you want to attract someone worse than me - then scream."
The man replied, raised the corner of his mouth, "But I don't recommend it."
He lifted the gun with the muzzle facing the ground, and shook it casually without threat.
Leah could tell that the gun was not loaded.
Her sight only stayed for a moment.
"What are you doing in the art gallery?" She asked another question.
"I can ask you the same question." The man replied, his eyes falling on the work card on her chest.
The small sign that says "British Consulate General in Naples · Cultural Officer" is now half covered by her coat, revealing only two letters on the edge.
His eyes stopped there for too long.
Leah slowly tightened her coat on her chest.
"I'm working overtime."
"Ah, workaholic." The man smiled and said, "The two most dangerous people in this city are gangsters and work overtime."
"Which one are you?"
"Guess it."
He took a step closer to her.
The distance between the two suddenly narrowed to a range that was not completely polite but not offensive.
The rain hit the edge of her umbrella, dripping down the edge, and spread a transparent curtain between them.
Through the rain curtain, the smell on his body penetrated - not a cheap gulong, but a clean woody smell, mixed with a very light smell of tobacco, like clothes turned out of an old wooden box, with the temperature of the underground wine cellar.
"Did you steal that painting?"
Leah asked. She didn't back down.
"Stealing?" He smiled and raised his hand to put the unloaded gun on his wrist. "It's too insulting for you to say that."
"What's missing is a painting." She said lightly, "It's not an insurance company."
The man tilted his head and seemed to think about it seriously.
"I protected it."
"From whom?"
"Save me from a world that is more hypocritical than you."
This sentence is too light, so light that it almost seems to exhale in her ear.
Only then did Lia realize that their distance had shortened a little unconsciously.
She looked up at him. At the moment when her eyes met him, her heartbeat was inexplicably missed.
It's not because of fear, but like something familiar was suddenly exposed--
He recognizes her.
In other words, he recognized the layer of "disguise" on her body.
"You don't look like you're saving anyone."
She said calmly, "It's more like provoking the police."
"Then he came here tonight," he looked up at the distance of the street, "not only the police, but also the diplomats."
He deliberately increased his tone with the word "diplomat".
Leah's fingers tightened impercepticly on the umbrella handle for a moment.
"Do you know who I am?"
"I know a lot of people."
He seemed to be casual, and then smiled, "However, your shoes tell me that you don't belong to this city."
Leah lowered her eyes and looked at the light high heels on her feet.
The heels are thin, the lines are sharp, and the leather surface has almost no traces of wear - obviously much cleaner than the block she just passed.
"What about your shoes?" She raised her eyes and asked back.
The man bowed his head.
His shoes were old leather boots, stained with splashed rain and a little indistinguishable dust. There was an obvious scratch on the toe of the shoe, as if it had been scratched by a stone.
"It's not suitable for art galleries." She commented.
"But it's very suitable for running away."
He looked up at her, and his eyes flashed for a moment.
It was a kind of gaze that only those who were used to avoiding being chased had, but it was covered up by him with a lazy smile.
Between them, the rain was still falling, and the air under the umbrella gradually became warm and narrow.
In the distance, a blue and white flashing light suddenly illuminated half of the wall.
The sound of the siren rushed in from the corner of the street, piercing the originally isolated silence.
Multiple police cars braked in a hurry by the square, and the tires ran over the stagnant water and splashed, rudely interrupting the seemingly long conversation.
The man withdrew his gaze and became calm.
"It seems that your colleagues are here."
Leah turned her head, glanced at the police car, and then looked at him.
"Do you want to go?" She asked in a tone of no concern, only objective questions.
"Shouldn't I stay here?" He asked back.
"You have a gun in your hand."
The man seemed to "think" of what he had in his hand. He looked down, and then put the gun into his waist, and his movements naturally seemed to sort out his tie.
"Don't worry," he whispered, "it won't be you who will die tonight."
"It sounds like a kind of promise."
"The promise is too expensive for this city." He said lightly, "But for you, I can make an exception."
The police have begun to rush to the main entrance of the art gallery.
One of them held a flashlight and shouted at them half questioningly and half alertly.
"You have two choices."
The man suddenly took a step closer to her.
This time, he didn't deliberately maintain a polite distance.
He stood under her umbrella, his shoulders almost close to hers, and the rain slid down from his hair and fell on the back of her hand, which was cold.
For a moment, she could almost feel the breath he exhaled through her ear.
"First," he said, "you shout and tell them that you have met someone in danger, and they will quickly press me to the ground."
"Second?"
"Come with me."
His voice was so low that it was almost a murmur, but it clearly penetrated into her ears.
This is an absurd proposal.
She knew that according to her identity, she should choose the first one in the next second, and even retreated before he approached her, pulled away, and let everything return to the rules and safety zone.
Her reason is reminding her like this.
The training she received, the tasks on her shoulders, and the political career ruined by her father because of the "wrong choice" all weighed on her heart with an invisible weight at this moment.
But her body didn't move.
He was so close to her that she could smell the smell of tobacco diluted by the rain through her shirt, and she could also see the fine scar on the side of his neck rising and falling slightly between her breathing.
"Aren't you afraid of me?" He asked in a low voice.
Leah looked at him and suddenly smiled.
"Should I be afraid?" She asked back.
The sound of rain seemed to be more dense at this moment.
The footsteps of the policeman quickly approached behind him. Some people had already shouted her name, and some people questioned her in Italian voice:
"Miss Cole, who is over there? Do you need any help?"
The man didn't look back, but just looked at her quietly.
In his eyes, she didn't see the anxiety of ordinary criminals about "escaping", nor did she see the fear of bullets.
She only saw an almost boring calm - as if he was used to being hunted, used to going in and out of the cracks of the rules, and didn't care whether he would fail next time.
"You know, Miss Cole."
He suddenly lowered his voice and called out her surname in English. "You are standing in the rain. It doesn't look like you are working overtime, but more like you are hesitating whether to jump down."
Her heart beat violently.